By All Means

From Queer Channel Media:

Next Monday and Tuesday, the transgender community will gather on Capitol Hill to rally for a trans-inclusive ENDA, among other things. The National Center for Transgender Equality will lead the effort, which begins with a day of preparations on Monday and ends on Tuesday with lobbying lawmakers.

The NCTE is offering a resource sheet to help activists make appointments with their members of Congress.

Autumn Sandeen wrote a blog for Pam’s House Blend today in which she said that after weighing the facts, she’s concluded that neither Democratic presidential candidate would rally hard enough for a trans-inclusive ENDA. A day like Transgender Lobby Day on Tuesday is needed to help change that. 

If you do lobby, please make it clear to the representatives and senators that neither NCTE nor HRC speaks for transsexuals and other trans folks.

HRC Calls Police To Stop Houston Dinner Protest

Seriously.

I’m just going to provide a link to Monica Roberts’ post over at Bilerico.

React accordingly.

This is Why I’m Glad John Kerry is Not President

From Bay Windows:

“We’ve been fighting more than 20 years to get these civil rights protections passed, and Massachusetts has always been in the forefront. After more than a decade of trying to pass ENDA under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, I think we’re finally at a point where, under Democratic leadership and with support from Massachusetts leaders, we finally have a good chance of passing a bill this year,” wrote Kerry in a statement to Bay Windows. “Barney Frank, Ted Kennedy, and I know this bill isn’t all we wanted it to be. We were among the first to speak up and argue that transgendered workers should be included in ENDA. We all want to see transgendered workers included, and I guarantee that day will come and we’ll get there, but this year it’s vital that we get the most protection for the greatest number of employees that we can.

Translation: Oh ye who needest the protection most, get stuffed – and hereth be thy staff of incremental progress with which to stuffeth yourself.

Yes, the treasonous, coke-snorting, draft-dodging rich brat has, since 2004, continued to destroy the Constitution and the country whose supreme law it is.

But, if John Kerry had been allowed to take office following the 2004 election and now had a Democratic Congress, we’d have Barney’s ENDA as law – and we would never see a micron of movement toward adding trans protections.

And that ain’t Oz.

Mart-Vader Exposed!

Vanessa Edwards Foster over at Trans Political has the poop on Wal-Mart’s corporate poop – and presumably some dirty legal laundry – becoming something of an open book.

Or, more accurately, an open video.

It seems as though the video production outfit that Wal-Mart had been using to videotape corporate events for three decades suddently found itself no longer needed by Mart-Vader – which, immediately found itself reminded that, for three decades, all of that videotaping had been going on under the auspices of an oral contract, with no provisions for limitations on the right of the production outfit to use (read: market for its own profit) those videos.

It what lives evilly by capitalism will die by capitalism, no?  (Seriously, though…Whatever your opinion is of Wal-Mart, Sam Walton was no dummy.  How on earth could he allow such an arrangement without something in writing?  And how could it have taken thirty years for someone at Wal-Mart to do something about what clearly was a ticking timebomb?)

Vanessa provides a series of links on the matter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2GpYjODgVk

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24033466#24033466

The MSNBC item (actually a CNBC report) is quite extensive on the background of the dispute and includes the footage that is irking Vanessa, and is likely irking a lot of other trans people.

After reading the news today, I’m about as livid as I can be. Good CORPORATE citizens Wal-Mart demonstrated their corporate sensitivity by engaging in some good-ol-boy humor for their cigar-chompin’ company muckety-mucks during their company meetings. They did so by using that one last American object-of-derision – the transgendered person in drag – as their fodder for yucks and hilarity! Take a gander at these!

I have to assume that, at some point, the video of the execs parading around in drag will be used against the corporation as proof of a hostile environment for trans employees.

Bullshit Alert

Speaking of Quota Queens, here’s something from one of the outfits whose implicit goal for America is a quota: A 100% christian-content quota for law, government and business.

Legalizing “gay marriage” will spark lawsuits against churches

Hint: That ‘alliance alert’ ain’t Shinola.

We Love Quotas, Why Don’t You?

Well, that seems to be the implicit message of one of the PR defenses of River Oaks Imaging, a Houston outfit that is on the short end of what is currently a successful trans anti-discrimination case.

Here’s the crux of Izabella Lopez’s case:

She says she didn’t get the job because she was born male.

The company says it wasn’t that, claiming she misrepresented herself.

BTW, here is Ms. Lopez herself:

 

Oh yeh…

This person would have gotten the job if she’d claimed to be male.

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.

But, as for the quota defense:

Howard Dulmage, the Houston lawyer for River Oaks Imaging, said the firm had a transgender employee when Lopez applied and has many gay and lesbian employees as well.

Translation: We have filled our Queer Quota: a few fags and dykes and one tranny.  Therefore, anything we might happen to do regarding any other queers who apply is above question.

And I bet some of his best friends are gay too.

Here’s a question that the Houston Chronk’s reporter, Mary Flood, should have asked: Did that trans employee that River Oaks already had transition on the job or was the person hired post-transition?

I have no knowledge either way, but I smell an on-the-job transition that the company tolerated just to avoid a suit – the type of situation that deludes many transsexuals into believing that their employers are far more trans-friendly than they really are.  Situations like Ms. Lopez’s are where the rubber hits the road.

Thankfully, Ms. Lopez decided to hit back.

Christianist Anti-Constitutionism is Alive and Well

In Illinois!!!

Seriously.

No….seriously.  Illinois – not Alabama.

Thanks to Mike Zorn of the Chicago Tribune for noticing that this happened and for publicizing it.

The following exchange between atheist activist Rob Sherman of Buffalo Grove and Ill. Rep. Monique Davis (D-Chicago) took place Wednesday afternoon in the General Assembly as Sherman testified before the House State Government Administration Committee. I know from experience that many of you will side with Davis (update — apparently I was wrong! ), but I ask you to consider what the outcry would have been if a lawmaker had  launched a similar attack on the beliefs of a religious person. Davis: I don’t know what you have against God, but some of us don’t have much against him.  We look forward to him and his blessings. And it’s really a tragedy — it’s tragic –  when a person who is engaged in anything related to God, they want to fight.  They want to fight prayer in school.  I don’t see you (Sherman) fighting guns in school. You know? I’m trying to understand the philosophy that you want to spread in the state of Illinois. This is the Land of Lincoln. This is the Land of Lincoln  where people believe in God, where people believe in protecting their children.… What you have to spew and spread is extremely dangerous, it’s dangerous– Sherman: What’s dangerous, ma’am? Davis: It’s dangerous to the progression of this state. And it’s dangerous for our children to even know that your philosophy exists! Now you will go to court to fight kids to have the opportunity to be quiet for a minute. But damn if you’ll go to  [court] to fight for them to keep guns out of their hands. I am fed up! Get out of that seat! Sherman: Thank you for sharing your perspective with me, and I’m sure that if this matter does go to court— Davis: You have no right to be here! We believe in something. You believe in destroying! You believe in destroying what this state was built upon.

No, Rep. Davis.

YOU have no right to be there – in the Illinois General Assembly or in any public office. 

The Constitution – the SUPREME law of the land – demands that all who hold office at any level accept the Constitution as being the SUPREME law of the land and, unless Dubya, Darth and Turd Blossom wiped it out while we (and members of the media less observant than Zorn) weren’t looking, it still forbids government recognition of an establishment of religion.

You know…

Like what you did in insulting Mr. Sherman?

Punday! Punday! Punday!

Probably unintentionally so, but nevertheless…

From Crooks and Liars:

Every week on The Chris Matthews Show, Matthews has a segment where he asks his panel of pundits to “Tell Me Something I Don’t Know.”   This week, Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic spoke as bluntly as any talking head has done since Bush/Cheney took office:

The latest revelations on the torture front show—the memo from John Yoo—as well as revelations from Phillippe Sands’ book, mean that Donald Rumsfeld, David Addington and John Yoo should not leave the United States any time soon. They will be at some point indicted for war crimes.  They deserve to be.

Damn straight.

I know…

I shouldn’t make fun of that.  I love C&L and, even though I don’t have much use for Sullivan, he certainly is on the mark with that observation (at least with the sentiment; you do realize that they’re all going to get away with what they’ve done, though, don’t you?)

Damn straight.

Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick! Chappaquiddick!

Oh yeh…

Mary Jo Kopechne!

From Time:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy is jumping into the middle of an uproar within the gay community whose causes he has long championed.

…

The Massachusetts Democrat is leading a push in the Senate for a federal ban on job bias against gays, lesbians and bisexuals — but not transsexuals, cross-dressers and others whose outward appearance doesn’t match their gender at birth.

My dear friend, the late Dee McKellar had a theory about why Teddy Bare is such a prick when it comes to the notion of trans-inclusion.

No proof of its validity, mind you – so I don’t feel comfortable sharing it –  but, a theory.

The longer he continues to be a prick about it, the more I think Dee was probably right.